If you haven't cried deeply a number of times, your meditation hasn't really begun.
Interpretation
Deep emotional experiences are essential for true meditation and self-discovery.
Ajahn Chah emphasizes that genuine meditation goes beyond mere sitting in silence; it involves confronting and processing deep emotional pain. By allowing ourselves to experience and cry over our emotions, we open the door to a profound understanding of ourselves and enhance our meditation practice.
In practice
In a mindfulness workshop, the facilitator used the quote to stress the importance of emotional release in personal growth.
Once you understand non-self, then the burden of life is gone. You'll be at peace with the world. When we see beyond self, we no longer cling to happiness and we can truly be happy. Learn to let go without struggle, simply let go, to be just as you are - no holding on, no attachment, free.
When sitting in meditation, say, "That's not my business!" with every thought that comes by.
If you haven't wept deeply, you haven't begun to meditate.
To observe and watch one's own mind is something really interesting. The untrained mind will run and follow its old habit patterns. Because it has not been trained and taught, it will get lost in all kinds of stories and issues. Therefore we have to train our mind. The meditation practice in Buddhism is all about training one's own mind.
Meditation is like a single log of wood. Insight and investigation are one end of the log; calm and concentration are the other end. If you lift up the whole log, both sides come up at once. Which is concentration and which is insight? Just this mind.
The heart is just the heart; thoughts and feelings are just thoughts and feelings. Let things be just as they are.
Paranoia is just another mask for ignorance. The truth, when you finally chase it down is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears
Do you live in a mine field or a garden? When we live in a minefield mentality, we explode with the weeds of worry, doubt, fear, lack and limitation. Choose to cultivate your inner garden!
You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
The first step is to measure whatever can easily be measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.
I wanted Yoda to be the traditional kind of character you find in fairy tales and mythology. And that character is usually a frog or a wizened old man on the side of the road. The hero is going down the road and meets this poor and insignificant person. The goal or lesson is for the hero to learn to respect everybody and to pay attention to the poorest person because that's where the key to his success will be.
Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.
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